


Find The Airport

by dragonshost



Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: CoLu Week 2020, F/M, Humor, Swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:09:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24713635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonshost/pseuds/dragonshost
Summary: Following a night of heavy drinking with Macbeth, Erik awakens in the middle of some rich person's lawn with a sprinkler blasting water in his face.  And with no clue how to get home.
Relationships: Cobra | Erik/Lucy Heartfilia
Comments: 1
Kudos: 30
Collections: CoLu Week 2020





	1. Splinter

It was the cold, unforgiving spray from the sprinkler raining down on his skull that jolted Erik from the peaceful blankness of his sleep, and back into the real world. He scrambled to his feet, swearing all the while, only to catch another blast from the sprinkler, right in his face, and into his open mouth.

Resigned and already hopelessly soaked, Erik sank back down onto the soggy ground. He coughed hard, trying to expel from his lungs what had entered through his nose. A drumbeat of pain reverberated through his head, made worse by the hacking and coughing, and nausea swam in his gut. Water droplets continued to rain down on his head as he finally heaved one final time and finally looked up to take a gander at his surroundings. Although it was light enough to see, the sky was still a dark blue and if he peered closely he could note faint stars. He thought the horizon might have been a couple shades of lighter blue, which indicated the arrival of dawn to him. He was in the middle of a large lawn, hemmed in by dark, thick, and presumably thorny hedges. Beyond the hedges, lay an impressively dark and forbidding forest, looming against the backdrop of stars. Immediately opposite of it lay what Erik could only assume was a house. Assume - because Erik had never seen a single housing dwelling that was quite so large before in person. Outside of a castle, at any rate. Castles were an exception to most rules, though, he'd found.

Great. He'd passed out on some random rich person's lawn. In one of their sprinklers, no less. In his...

He checked himself over.

In his suit.

Which was dry-clean only and already sporting mud and grass stains.

Also, were those mountains he saw in the distance…?

"Fuckin' brilliant," he groused to the early morning air, an act which only brought him pain – his skull feeling like it was splintering apart into itty bitty fragments to pierce directly into his brain. The cold water had done a superb job of awakening him, but had done little else of value and certainly wasn't helping his mother of all headaches. For a moment, he contemplated just lying back down in the puddle of water forming beneath him. It was bitingly cold, but being horizontal might ease the knots his stomach was tying itself into.

Not unfamiliar with the symptoms of a hangover, he resisted the urge. If he vomited, he'd like to not drown in the process. This also clued him into his situation a little bit. Which was, namely, that his love for alcohol has once again landed him in trouble. Why had he allowed Macbeth to cajole him into a pub crawl? To be fair, Erik had wanted to show the Scot the better points of Dublin and how better to begin than at its fine and not-as-fine pubs? Or something along those lines. It was honestly all a bit fuzzy.

Which begged the question though… how had he ended up here? Wherever "here" was. Because this was certainly not Dublin.

It was then that the sprinkler finally oscillated back around to blast him once more in the face. Spluttering, Erik hauled his soggy carcass upright. Wherever here was, he'd arrived somehow. Best figure that out and leg it before whoever owned the land showed up to rip him a new arsehole.

With that sound plan in mind, he picked a direction and stumbled its way. Ugh… the motion in concert with his generally moist and fluthered condition was making him seasick. Once out of the immediate range of the sprinkler, he collapsed to the grass again. It was still cold, but not quite as toothy as the puddle had been.

It was only then that he thought of his cell phone. Maybe he could call Macbeth and find out what in the world had happened last night. If it was indeed the prior night he was recalling. He couldn't quite be sure. Most drinking sessions didn't normally end with him facedown in a sprinkler after all. But he wasn't quite willing to rule it out, either.

A quick inspection of his suit turned up empty. And not just of the cell phone. Erik's wallet was also nowhere in evidence.

 _'Have I… been mugged?'_ he wondered, trying to pierce through the fog shrouding his memories. Absolutely… wonderful. Drunk, unconscious, facedown in a sprinkler, and mugged. This was turning into one heck of a good story. Provided he managed to make it back to tell anyone.

Had he taken a taxi to get here, maybe? That seemed about right. He'd been far too gone to have driven himself even if he'd been able to recall where he'd parked. But if he'd been mugged, was it before or after? After, he decided. Otherwise he wouldn't have had money for the fare. He doubted a mugger would have been so thoughtful as to pour him into a cab after emptying his pockets. Either that, or the culprit was the cab driver.

Or… wait.

Something pulled at the back of his mind. There was something else going on, he knew it. He struggled to recall. Something about this situation was familiar. Not the sprinkler part. But the other bits. The lack of cell phone, wallet, and an unknown location…

A light burst into existence inside his head.

_Find The Airport._

That was it. It had been all Macbeth and Sorano would talk about on the voice chat for the past few months. Their new favorite game. Using a randomizer function on a map-thing online, they'd get dropped into an unknown location, and then using only the street-view find their way to the nearest airport. No phone or outside maps allowed.

With that knowledge returned to him, a dread filled Erik and sat on his gut. He felt like sinking further into the mud. Had… had he agreed… to play a real life version of the game with Macbeth…?

Erik wished he could say that it was impossible, that he had more sense than to agree to something like that. But he was pretty sure he didn't. Not when a large amount of alcohol got involved, anyway. He'd done plenty of other crazy things before. Agreeing to play a hare-brained game wasn't outside the limits of what he'd do to impress.

So if that really was the case… he was completely screwed. Erik had no idea how to play the game aside from the basic instructions. Tuning out Macbeth and Sorano as they had strategized and discussed ways to succeed at the game had been second nature to him. Primarily, the voice chat was a way to soothe his nerves after a long day. His mates could have been arguing about whether the moon was made of swiss or cheddar and he probably wouldn't have noticed.

Damn it, why hadn't he paid more attention?!

Erik pulled every ounce of energy he could out of his tired muscles and once again tottered to his feet. Time to find… a road. Or some sort of landmark he recognized. In the absence of further ideas, it seemed the only logical course of action. If he was truly playing a live version of _Find The Airport_ , then how far could Macbeth have taken him in one night? He was probably still somewhere in Ireland. This wouldn't be too difficult, once he figured out whether to head east or west. Besides… Ireland was an island. A big island, but an island all the same. At some point he'd hit water and then it would only be a matter of time before he found a village or someplace else he recognized.

But first, the road. Find the road.

He stumbled around some more, the sky lightening the longer he did. "How big _is_ this fuckin' house?" he muttered, shooting it a baleful look. He'd barely come around one side of it, and the closer he came to the building, the larger it became. It sat, silent and still. Nothing moved behind its many windows, not a light shone within.

Finally reaching a place to turn, Erik found a courtyard. Or the driveway – it was oddly difficult to tell. A few hedges lined a flagstone entrance path wide enough to host two or three lanes of vehicles. Near the house, in the center of the path, sat a statue with wings. But rather than the house, what really captured Erik's attention was the rest of the estate.

And an estate it certainly was. The flagstone road continued away from the house further than Erik could see, lined by yet more hedges. Several smaller buildings flanked the road, and he thought he spotted gardens and monuments in the distance, made hazy in the pre-dawn light.

The sheer size of it all, though, was truly daunting. It stretched in all directions, sprawling everywhere.

Fuck this. Erik wasn't walking all the way down that road. It was way too far, and he was way too unsteady on his feet.

So instead, he turned around and marched towards the door. If the owner of the house cussed him out for waking them up and trespassing, then so be it. Erik would take the hit to his pride and call Kinana and beg his foster-sister to come find him and take him home.

And then he would find Macbeth, and strangle the bastard.


	2. Constellation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lateness of this chapter. In my defense, I was really sick for a while. To make up for it, I added extra scenes to the chapter.

No one answered Erik’s knocking, no matter how hard or long he rapped his knuckles against the large doors. When his skin threatened to break, he finally stopped, took a step back and regarded the building carefully. From a distance it had looked pretty good, if dark on the inside. But now that the sun was starting to rise… imperfections were making themselves apparent.

A long crack rose up the side of the building to the left of the entrance – all the way up to the window on the third floor. The plaster it ran alongside of was also a slightly different shade of white than the rest. Ivy peeked out from beneath an eve, dangling just out of direct sight and easily overlooked. Turning slightly to peer down the property, he noted that the hedges were creeping out onto the path and weeds poked their heads through the cracks between the flagstones. Closer at hand, by the door, the planters of flowers looked like they needed a good drink of water and were starting to sprout tiny buds in the untenanted soil. 

Great. Macbeth had dropped him off at an _abandoned_ estate. But one which still had water, judging from the sprinklers, and grass that hadn’t grown out of control despite the growth apparent on the hedges. Which meant…

Erik shoulder checked one the concrete planters just outside the door, a scraping filling the air and chiseling its way through Erik’s brain as it moved slightly. Nothing appeared beneath it. The same held true for the other planter, and Erik started to search the nearby vicinity. Nothing on the sill above the door, or amongst the plants. He was about to give up and check the other side of the property when an innocuous looking stone off to the side of the path captured his attention – one not mimicked on the other side in the same symmetry the rest of the place held. Overturning it revealed what Erik hunted for: a key.

He almost snorted at how relatively easy it was to find. Real Estate agents these days normally used lockboxes, but every once in a while something like this happened. Especially out in the countryside. No one wanted to travel a long way to show a large property to prospective buyers without having a key or risk forgetting the code to the box. Or else it could be something left over from the previous owners that hadn’t been discovered until now. Either way, it was easy pickings for someone with a youth as misspent as Erik’s had been.

Inserting the key in the lock, Erik was surprised when it resisted his efforts halfway in. His brow furrowing, he jiggled the key in the lock until it wormed fully inside. Only then was he able to unlock the door, which swung inward to reveal a darkened foyer. Erik grunted as he tried to extract the key from the lock. It was stubbornly embedded in the door, however, and after several minutes of struggling with it, Erik gave up and left it in the door. Red marks left behind by his fight with the key stung his hands but the irritation didn’t stop him from searching for a light switch.

Which didn’t… seem to exist. Not in the vicinity of the door, at any rate.

Erik peered around the foyer, spotting several lamps on sconces set in the walls, bedecked in cobwebs. They were too high to reach easily, so no chance of inspecting them unless he started climbing on the furniture – the presence of which was also somewhat unusual. He had assumed that the abandoned estate would be… well, devoid of pretty much everything. But sure enough, there long tables in the foyer and even a couple of benches. All of the furniture was covered in off-white cloth to prevent dust from settling onto the furniture itself.

And dust there definitely was, coating every surface in a uniform layer of gray. If Erik disturbed anything or even so much as took a single step further inside, it would be readily apparent that someone had broken in. Forget footsteps, they’d find his entire damn corpse if he inhaled the inevitable dust cloud that would arise.

Then again, it wasn’t like he had many other options at hand. He was soaked and dripping all over and unless he found some way to dry off, he was going to catch sick. As it was, he was already lost and God only knew how far away civilization was. A working telephone or unexpired food was probably too much to ask for given how long the place must have been empty for, so much as he hated the idea of it, hoofing it across the entire gargantuan estate was probably in his near future.

A loud grumble arose from his midsection at the thought of food. Erik would kill for a fry up right about then. Water would have to do for now. With the sprinklers running, surely the water to the house was, too.

Erik peeled off his jacket and held the fabric to his face to block the worst of the dust. Then he ventured forth to explore his new surroundings.

* * *

Over two hours and floors later, Erik was somehow still not anywhere close to finding out just where the dickens he was. He was mostly dry now, but that was the only bright spot in his predicament (even if his shoes were still a little… squelchy). The longer he explored, the more the hairs on the back of his neck started to rise. Old, uninhabited buildings were creepy. Especially when the character of the original residents was still lingering about. It was in the paler sections of the walls where pictures once hung, and the rugs laid out in front of fireplaces. It was in the sheer amount of rooms: bedrooms, a ballroom, a sitting room, kitchens, large dining hall, and staff quarters. This was a building meant to be lived in, and by a great number of people at that. Seeing it so… empty and lifeless, where it was meant to be the opposite stirred up great feelings of wrongness.

And there was still an entire floor left, plus an attic if what he’d spotted was indeed the entrance to one. Erik was dreading what he’d find up there. Unlike the rest of the house, it would definitely be inhabited. By bugs, spiders, or rats, he wasn’t sure yet, but he was already steeling himself against it.

Oddly, the third floor had much fewer rooms compared to the previous floors. In fact, there were only four doors. Since he’d had yet to discover the master of the manor’s rooms, he could only assume that at least one of the mysterious doors belonged to it.

He soon found it, although it was devoid of a fresh change of clothes. It wasn’t all that surprising, though. With the amount of time the place had abandoned, surely any clothes left behind would have long since been eaten by moths. Even the beds in the manor had been stripped, leaving behind bare mattresses on imposing frames.

The next room he came to, however…

It was a study. Books lined every wall with chairs to Erik’s either side. In front of him a short staircase led up to yet more books, and the sight of a fourth story likewise filled with bookshelves sent Erik’s head to spinning, trying to reconcile how all of it fit under the same room. A grand desk sat atop the staircase landing, sitting like a lonely sentinel in the room. Light shone in through the wide windows lining the wall, illuminating dust motes and making the room shine.

Gazing out the windows, Erik saw the driveway of flagstones stretching onward towards the horizon. Shading his eyes against the sunlight, he saw a fountain much further down as well as where the land dipped and continued on unabated.

Erik wasn’t sure why, but the room struck him as having belonged to people that loved it more than any other in the manor. He couldn’t help but wonder what made them leave it behind. Well, the easy answer was sudden destitution, he supposed. The building must have cost a fortune and a half to build and stock with furniture. The wine cellar – now devoid of its prized contents (a hefty blow to Erik’s morale, it must be said) – had enough shelves to have once held a truly impressive wine collection. The building even had fucking columns, of all the pretentious…

But still… it had to have hurt a great deal, to leave it.

It was a shame to leave the room behind, but Erik had to be getting on with his search. He needed to get back to his own little flat – a much, much more modest affair than all this, but home all the same.

Before he left the room, Erik conducted a brief search of it for some sort of map. Most rich people’s studies in the cinemas had some sort of globe or map lying around, didn’t they? Although… this one didn’t seem to. Which sort of made sense. If you knew where you were, why would you need a map?

He sighed and pulled a book off the shelf, mildly curious what people who owned a building like this would read. Opening it to a random page, he stared long and hard at the printed words.

“…I can’t fuckin’ read this.”

He shut it with a snap and returned it to its place. “...The hell kind of language is this?!” he wondered aloud, pulling out several other books only to find more of the same. “Is this Gaelic?” He’d never had the opportunity or been inclined to learn it himself, honestly, so he couldn’t be sure. Maybe it was Welsh? Wales wasn’t all that far from Ireland after all. In fact, it was a straight shot to Wales out of Dublin. It was possible that Macbeth had shoved his plastered ass onto a ferry bound for Wales last night. But it… it looked like completed gibberish. It didn’t even look like a language, not really. None that Erik had ever seen, at any rate. Which… didn’t completely rule out Welsh, but wasn’t that language dying? An entire library’s worth of books written in it would be priceless beyond measure, and somehow Erik very much doubted that he’d just stumbled into a treasure trove.

Giving up, Erik shelved all the books. Mysterious and intriguing though it was, Erik still had the more pressing mystery of how to get home and how to make Macbeth pay for this little misadventure.

Leaving the study, Erik only barely glanced in the remaining two rooms. One was another bedroom, also largely cleared out, and the second was an open room full of more books and benches for reading. It lacked the imposing quality of the first study, but it was warm and full of light from the many windows.

Finally, he made his way to a spiral staircase tucked into a corner of the building that led up into the attic.

It was here that he had his first bit of real luck. Not in the critter department, unfortunately, as Erik did happen to spot a couple of rattails disappearing into the more shadowed edges upon his intrusion. But contrary to what he’d feared, the attic was incredibly well lit with plenty of room for his head.

Standing out amongst the clutter, at the far end of the attic, a painting sat in the bright sunlight. Curiosity overcoming him, Erik carefully made his way over to it. It had faded a great deal from time and the constant sunlight exposure, but… Erik thought it looked like a family portrait. The faces were no longer distinct, of course. But there were two tall figures and a smaller one in front. There was even a dog-shaped blob. The painting had been torn in several places, but someone had lovingly taped them back together. Some of the tape had failed, leaving a few scraps to hang.

Clearly whoever had done it hadn’t known how to properly store a painting, or they wouldn’t have left it out in the sunlight like that. Or maybe it had been their intention to let it fade over time? It was impossible to tell now. Erik wondered if it depicted the family that had last lived there. Regardless, it had been left behind, so maybe not.

Erik turned away from the portrait, and began to search the attic in earnest. There was a lot of junk. Candelabra and old silverware chief among them, along with some half eaten drapes and rugs. Children’s toys occupied a whole corner of the space, and crumbling documents in boxes claimed another.

Then, tucked behind a stack of worn leather saddles, bridle tack, and whips (which Erik dearly hoped had been used for equestrian purposes though he hadn’t noticed a stable on the grounds), Erik found a stack of what appeared to be old camping gear.

Finally, a bit of good luck. It all seemed to be in relatively good condition, too. Tucked into one of the bags was a flask that sloshed when Erik picked it up. Erik took immediate possession of it, setting it off to the side as he dug through the rest of the gear and moved the things in the best condition into a singular pack. Oddly, he found a sextant of all things amongst the gear, along with the more typical compass. Having no clue how to use a sextant, Erik left it behind and kept the compass instead. Canteens, a sleeping roll, and a tent all went into the pack, as did another hidden flask of what proved to be a very fine whiskey.

By the time Erik was finished, the sun was much higher in the sky. Satisfied with his haul, Erik left the attic behind and made his way to the kitchens to fill the canteens with water.

Then he left the strange, abandoned manor behind – pausing only to relock the door and replace the key where he’d found it. Oddly, it didn’t resist him as hard as it did before.

Feeling much more confident than when he had awoken that morning, Erik set off down the flagstone path.

* * *

Camping wasn’t his forte but it couldn’t be that hard to figure out what he’d forgotten over the years. Or so he’d assumed when he’d first started out, but now Erik was seriously reconsidering it. Tents, it turned out, were a pain in the ass to set up – even when he’d made sure to stop well ahead of the sun setting so he could do it in the light.

Well, now it was dark, and the tent was more of a blanket across his bedroll now. It would have to do. At least it was a warm night.

Even if he was camping in a graveyard.

Now as a proper Irishman, he knew better than to mess with the dead even if he didn’t believe in a lot of the old tales. Better pragmatic than waking up to find oneself in faerie land with no way home.

But his feet were killing him, he was starving, and he was unbelievably thirsty so here he was.

Who the hell even had a graveyard on their estate? Even a nice one like this, though a bit overgrown like everything else. Trees lined the border, and statues periodically dotted the sea of headstones. Wildflowers bloomed everywhere, filling the air with a heady perfume, and insects chittered all around. Surely in such a pleasant place, the dead wouldn’t be inclined to make mischief at Erik’s expense.

Done with the tent, placed under the trees in case it rained, Erik approached the line of graves. “Sorry for disturbing your rest,” he informed them. “I hope you don’t mind a little company for one night.”

The wind rustled the grass and tree branches. Feeling awkward, Erik returned to his makeshift camp.

That night, he fell asleep picking out constellations from a sky full of unending stars.


End file.
